TURKISH PRESS 11 MAY 06
BBC Monitoring
11 May 06
Armenian genocide issue
Posta (tabloid) “With every passing day, the Armenians are adding
new moves to their actions over the genocide claims The noose around
our country is tightening and we are just watching We are gradually
becoming isolated and still we are not taking any steps to influence
events We have missed the train. From now we must take steps which
are much more significant, much more influential, and require much
more political courage.” (Commentary by Mehmet Ali Birand)
Hurriyet (centre-right) “How can French people explain away the dirty
events in their own recent past? When it is about them, they consider
it reasonable to ‘leave history to the historians’, but when the
target is Turkey, they do not hesitate to apply contradictory double
standards and declare: ‘Saying there was no genocide of Armenians is a
crime requiring a five-year sentence.’ Moreover, they ignore the fact
that what they are doing is totally against ‘freedom of expression’,
the mother of all liberties.” (Commentary by Oktay Eksi)
Milliyet (centrist) “We can see what ‘genocide’ means from what Hitler
did to the Jews. The comparison that France wants to establish now
is unfair and an assault against Turkey.” (Commentary by Derya Sazak)
“Humiliating Turkishness Armenian genocide France It is not easy
for concepts to establish themselves properly in Turkey or France
Unfortunately it takes time to learn the lessons of democracy.”
(Commentary by Hasan Cemal)
Radikal (centre-left) “There must be people in Ankara who really have
the knowledge, the conscience and virtue to see there is no end to
this issue. Sooner or later we need to find another way to deal with
the Armenian issue.” (Commentary by Murat Yetkin)
Zaman (moderate, pro-Islamic) “Such a ban [on Armenian genocide
denial in France] tramples on one of the most fundamental principles
of liberal democracy which the EU and the European Council want to
prevail in all their members. There is no doubt that criminalizing
‘saying there was no Armenian genocide’ violates freedom of
expression just as much as describing ‘saying genocide has been
inflicted on the Ottoman Armenians’ in Turkey as a crime of ‘assault
on Turkishness’.” (Commentary by Sahin Alpay)
Kurdish issue
Yeni Safak (liberal, pro-Islamic) “US Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice has not promised Turkey anything about the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’
Party] issue, nor will she. But she did feel able to guarantee Jalal
Talabani [president of Iraq and an ethnic Kurd] that they will not
allow Turkey to mount a cross-border operation. Even if nothing else
happens, does this not confirm the US-PKK relationship?”
(Commentary by Ibrahim Karagul)